Ethereal Dawn
by MarthaJones11
Summary: Jupiter falls and hope is lost to the vast reaches of infinite time. The First Primary of House Abrasax capitalizes on her moral fortitude.
1. Chapter 1

Jupiter isn't entirely certain just _what _she feels when she sees the ball of energy propelled from the unseen weapon hit Caine square in the chest. It isn't surprise, or fear, or even terror. Rather it is some strange feeling that Jupiter cannot immediately pin down, but she can name it when she sees Caine's body hit the stone floor beneath the viewing field of Balem Abrasax's crystalline floor.

It is relief.

She is so tired of fighting, so exhausted from the whirlwind of the past few days and from all of the information imparted to her and battles for her soul and attempts on her life. She wants one solitary night back home, unaware of _all of this_. She wants to sit directionless and drifting upon the roof of her uncle's house, while somewhere in the dark the sirens and the thunder drift around her and the stars overhead dance in their cold, remote beauty; a world where she is not this strange re-occurrence of an interstellar queen.

And some small part of her believes that Caine's death might grant her that peace, and that reprieve from this world. But another part of her _knows_ better, knows that, deep down, this nightmare through which she swims without hope of breaking surface, will eventually drown her, and that Caine's death stops nothing.

Jupiter returns to the land of the living, or perhaps the realm of the eternal gods.

An immortal is gazing at her, triumphant. There are exploding galaxies in his eyes. And she knows that Balem Abrasax has claimed victory.

As the burning hurricanes collapse around them, there seems to be a resigned power imbalance that spreads itself between them. Balem nods, nearly imperceptibly, at Chicancery Night. Jupiter feels the tablet being removed from her hands, almost gently guided out of her grasp by the small fingers of Balem's closest advisor. And she knows that, now, Balem Abrasax has nothing but time. Indeed, it is a strange, ironic thought; his most precious resource is also his greatest weapon against her rebellion.

The light fingers of Mr. Night are again brushing against hers, now softly drawing her wrists behind her back and binding them. His touch conveys a sorrow, an unspoken apology, a regret. Jupiter cannot dwell upon the hands of the advisor. A new touch is upon her face, cold fingers that dance and ghost across her cheek and jaw, fingers that move across her skin as though she is an illusion, a breakable hallucination, something that might disappear if handled without the utmost care.

Apparently Balem Abrasax likes to test his theories.

Pain explodes across her face. She holds her head to the side, jaw resting on her chin, keeping her eyes away from the coldly victorious eyes of Balem. Jupiter knows one emotion now. Fear has replaced relief. She now _truly _understands the magnitude of the situation, the gravity of what has transpired in the past few minutes from Caine's death to the stinging slap across her face that now forced white-hot pain to slowly spread across her cheek. Resigned, she slowly turns to face Balem again.

His blank visage gives away nothing. But Jupiter sees the sound and the fury behind his eyes. The immortal seems to read her thoughts.

"Time, Jupiter, is the luxury afford to us," he breaths, "It is our right."

Jupiter says nothing. It matters not. No words that she can craft will change his mind now that Balem holds the true upper hand. Caine is dead. The Aegis will soon escape the collapsing atmosphere of the raging planet. Her family lies unconscious and unknowing beneath her feet. There is no one else. She is alone with this powerful ruler of galaxies.

She has one bargaining chip for her life: the lives of six billion people. Jupiter silently resolves that, regardless of the terrors that he might unleash upon her, Balem Abrasax will never gain control of Earth.

His eyes are whitecaps of memory upon a raging sea, confusing and violent.

There is no life beyond this.

Balem Abrasax's words are a whisper that tears open the silence, a mere breath upon her cracked lips.

"You will come with me."

Jupiter cannot protest. Her wrists are bound, her will more so. She again feels Mr. Night's fingers grasp her hands, softly, softly. She is spun around and the vast expanse of Balem's planetary empire disappears behind her; her feet numbly march across his halls and board an elaborately decorated ship as all around her fires rage and pillars of industry collapse. Jupiter feels nothing now, not relief or fear or anger. She only feels the cold breath of Balem Abrasax as he follows closely behind her, boarding the ship with a contingent of guards.

The First Primary of House Abrasax disappears into a chamber deep within the hull.

They leave the death behind. Somewhere, far ahead, imperceptible, a clear blue highway, cold stars that dance through the wine-soaked galaxies. But Jupiter cannot see it.


	2. Chapter 2

Jupiter is twelve days old.

This is how she measures time now. Her skin tingles. She runs a hand over an unblemished arm, simultaneously impressed and horrified by its perfected pallor. The paleness troubles her. She shines with a strange coldness that is reflected by the skies above their floating ship.

There is a mirror nearby. Jupiter rises and walks haltingly toward it; she is both intrigued and resentful of her new appearance. She drinks in her reflection with hungry eyes. The callouses that had previously graced her knees and palms, gifts of a long life spent cleaning houses, have disappeared. It is perhaps the most marvelous thing to Jupiter. She stares harder.

Irises of a thousand stars watch over her as she marvels at herself.

She is disgusted. Rushing to her private bath, she promptly and violently vomits the contents of her stomach into the toilet. A low and painful moan escapes her perfected lips, a sad lament to a cold and unfeeling universe whose laws she has violated somehow. Jupiter collapses to the floor, completely spent. Memories of her new birthday flash across her mind like the darting comets overhead. She recalls moments and terrors…

Balem had summoned her. Mr. Night had come to collect her. They had not spoken; there was no need.

She was delivered, that was the word the splice had used.

"I am delivering Ms. Jones."

She was a package, a commodity.

She was left alone with the eldest Abrasax. Cold, unfeeling, incomprehensible, transfixing; he was the soul of the universe. Jupiter had fixated, of all things, upon his gilded collar. It caressed his neck as a lover, golden and close and intimate. She mused upon its purpose as Balem stalked toward her. His footsteps were air. His eyes were fire.

Jupiter was abandoned at the bottom of the universe.

Balem guided her feet to the pool. She protested heavily. Her fingernails had raked at his perfect skin, at the exposed flesh of his chest and stomach. Jupiter liked to think she had scarred him, somehow, had left a mark on the immortal that could never be erased, not in a thousand years and not with a thousand lives.

It was then that Balem had picked her up, tossing her roughly over his shoulder. Jupiter had not thought him capable of such strangely human tactics. She flashed back. Her cousin had done this, once. Their pool of infinity had been the shores of the lake; her protestations had been the giggling foolery of youth. His actions had been the responsive actions of the young and vigorous and playful, his touch had been gentle and yielding as they entered the icy waters of the Earth.

Balem's touch had burned with the age of ten thousand galaxies.

She screamed as they broke the surface of the pool.

The waters of infinite life were warm and inviting.

Jupiter could feel humanity swirling around her as Balem forced her under. Her tears mingled with the life giving water. Silent screams had continued to escape through her parted lips. Perhaps the stars dancing overhead had heard her cries, but she received no mercy from them.

When Balem finally released his grip, Jupiter rose from the waters, gasping for air and for redemption. She was reborn into Hell. Perhaps Balem Abrasax had seen the flames raging behind her eyes, as he had cautiously moved slightly away from her rising form. And she felt the blood of Seraphi Abrasax flowing through her veins.

She had not seen Balem since that day…

Jupiter is thirteen days old.

She is getting weaker. Everything that she eats is promptly lost. The war crimes committed on her poor toilet are abhorrent. Eventually, she stops eating. Sickness surrounds her like flies upon the dead. Perhaps she is dead, Jupiter muses. Her life is bought with the stolen futures of the murdered. There is blood on her name.

Jupiter is sick. Her mind rebels against the perfection of her body. She floats away from herself, spinning in incomprehensible movements away from familiar land and drifting off into an endless and raging sea.

Is there a God?

She muses heavily as she shivers against her sheets. Overhead, planets dance, cold and dark and filled with seraphim and tears.

Her mother had taught her the prayers, the chants, the supplications to the Mother of the Dawn and the Most Holy Theotokos. Where is the royal city now, she wonders? The New Jerusalem must be swimming with the liquid souls that touch her skin and dance upon her perfect lips.

She whispers prayers for their souls. She does not pray for her own. It was forfeit the moment her skin broke the waters of infinite life, dragged down to the living afterlife by the only ruler to which the universe pays homage. Her drifting mind imagines chants and incense rising up to him. He sits upon a gilded throne. His eyes are impassive and cold as he oversees the supplications that encompass the stars.

Balem Abrasax is the only God here.

Jupiter shares in his Holy Eucharist of strange sacrifices to himself. Perhaps she should confess her sins to the immortal with galaxies for eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

_A Brief History of Time _slips from Jupiter's fingers when she suddenly notices Kalique Abrasax standing in the shadows of her chamber. There is no movement between them. Finally, Jupiter stands and retrieves the Hawking novella from its undignified position on the marble floor and places it, nearly reverently, upon her bedspread. Jupiter does not know why or how Balem Abrasax maintains a library of Earth's literature in his empire; she does not question, but only uses.

She does not take her eyes off of Kalique.

The Second Primary of House Abrasax is a vision cloaked in starlight and silks.

Jupiter knows that Kalique Abrasax is dangerous. She is the snake that lies in wait within the tall weeds, obscured by grasses and clothed in its own splendid raiment, calling gently to unsuspecting prey. She is the watcher on the wall, the eyes that stay open when all others have shut themselves against the night. She is certainly more dangerous than Titus, more skilled, more willing to settle in for the long game.

And Kalique Abrasax could persuade the Devil himself to do her dirty work.

Jupiter approaches cautiously, extending her arms to bestow a motherly hug upon the immortal. She, too, can play this game.

She stumbles forward slightly when her arms fall through Kalique's suddenly transparent frame. The woman smiles sadly at her confusion.

"Balem does not know I am here, Jupiter," she says, "I have come of my own accord."

Her voice is a trickle of honey, a swirling storm.

Jupiter steps back. She is slowly coming to the realization that she is playing a game whose rules were never explained to her, and she is the king piece. She did not volunteer to join this world. Their lives are cut diamonds and the heady notes of jazz in back allies and the first line of cocaine on a mirror shattered by moonlight, and Jupiter is a flickering streetlamp encased by advertisements and posters – but she is _desirable_ to them.

She composes herself, draws herself up to encompass the galaxies flowing through her veins. Kalique takes note. Seraphi Abrasax is not dead. Jupiter's voice breaks the silence like the morning traffic draws the chariot of the dawn.

"Why are you here, Kalique?"

The immortal has the good grace to pause before answering. When she speaks, her voice is the business section of the morning paper, the handshake and the polite nod of a financial transaction.

"Balem seeks to marry you, Jupiter," she responds.

Any follows words are abruptly cut off by a harsh laugh from Jupiter. Kalique recognizes her faux pas and attempts to backtrack. She centers herself, the previous cringe of embarrassment vanishing and leaving a blank face, a palate cleansed and ready for another course.

"He is not Titus, Jupiter. Titus was reckless and had no real understanding of his endeavors. Balem knows this," she says, pausing slightly before continuing. "There are other ways of gaining control of Earth through marriage, Jupiter."

Jupiter measures her words carefully. She feels as though she is plunging her fingers into the softness of the earth on a spring morning; there is depth here, but also darkness, things to be discovered and unearthed but also things better left to ferment in the blackness of the ground. Ah, gunpowder and smoke, you Abrasax royals, she muses. You've gone and left bullet wounds in so many chests.

Kalique moves closer to her in the silence. Elysian, this one is, Jupiter thinks, as the immortal walks upon stardust across the room.

Words drip like poisoned manna from Kalique's lips. Jupiter knows she should grasp at them, as one starving in the wilderness, but she cautions herself against it.

"Your will is iron, Jupiter, but metal melts under the most intense of heats. Do not let yourself get burned by those who carry fire in their veins and flames in their eyes," she whispers. "Balem is chaos and darkness in its highest form."

Jupiter cannot speak. She is full of words and empty of mouth.

A knock at the door rattles the silence. Kalique jumps, her façade of perfection momentarily shattered as Jupiter sees a flash of fear dart across her face like the shooting of a travelling star overhead.

"Hell follows with him, Jupiter."

Kalique Abrasax puts a hand to her neck and disappears.

Chicanery Night steps into the room, oblivious to the lingering presence of the vanished royal whose position he now occupies. Jupiter nods impatiently at him. Night is the worker pushing past the crowd to find some peace and quiet, the silence in the library, the one who prefers to speak poignantly or not at all. At times, Jupiter appreciates his candor. Right now, she is weaving and confused and requires the raging thoughts of her own consciousness.

"Balem demands your presence."

The words are not unexpected.

Jupiter follows Night from her chambers. She can still feel the heavy air where an image of Kalique Abrasax spoke with words like patterned silk. Her feet drag slightly. She is still sick. Night notices but says nothing. Sickness permeates the Abrasax family. For all of their immortality and beauty, time still ravishes the minds of their members, sinking in like a slow but inevitable coil of blackness.

Balem's voice echoes in her head as they approach his chambers. It is cut from stone and skeletons, peaceful and slightly familiar and harsh. He speaks in whispers and dreams. His skin is pale and ash, a lazy smile coated in morning dew and evening stars.


	4. Chapter 4

The room is small, and Jupiter feels the weight of its heady simplicity closing in about her. Something wicked stirs within these walls. They themselves breathe and sing and groan under the weight of ten thousand souls and ten thousand stars. She feels a flicker of fear dance upon her skin, but fear is for the living and she walks among the dead.

The galactic Hades stands before her, back greeting her gaunt form.

Lightening in veins, thunder in hearts, and eyes like city lights with dust seeping off fingertips. Something real and raw stands before her with hands clasped and dripping with golden death.

Jupiter thinks he was created from the air of every beautiful place in the universe. The ruins. The temples. The pyramids. The crypts. Vicious but mesmerizing, cold but with fire in his eyes, strong and captivating and mystical and manipulative and calculated and unnerving.

She struggles to keep her footing. Jupiter is weak; the sickness of the mind overwhelms her in his presence. He hears the slight shuffling of her feet as she shifts, nearly imperceptibly, attempting to keep ramrod straight in this room of memories and of fear. She cannot falter.

Balem Abrasax turns and regards her with indifferent curiosity.

Jupiter wants to rip the invisible crown from his head, claw scratches down his cheeks, and scream until her throat bleeds as she cries out for reverence. Her God demands sacrifice, and her altar has been empty far too long.

Instead, she readjusts her feet. All her wild and furious energy is channeled into the simple act of standing. She hates herself for this weakness.

The immortal circles her slowly, drinking in the racing heartbeat of one sick and weak.

Whispered words upon her ear appear out of a wisp of lavender and sage.

"You may sit, Jupiter Jones. Rest your weary body."

Jupiter resists the urge to flinch away from the doubly repulsive and enticing breath that dances upon her neck. She refuses to show fear to the immortal with galaxies for eyes. No, no indeed, she senses his larger purpose with this meeting.

"There are no chairs," her simple response, lacking all formality and terms of respect for the powerful ruler of worlds.

Balem Abrasax lingers at her back before finishing his strange circuit about her body, coming to rest barely touching her face. This time, Jupiter flinches away as slim fingers ghost along her cheekbones, drawing her toward his lips with gentle encouragement that is too kind for the steward of the underworld incarnate.

"Then you may kneel," he whispers, his words dancing upon her own parched lips.

Jupiter does not dare move. She cannot stand for much longer; indeed, every breath she takes seems to draw life from her very bones. But she will not kneel. Her face makes contact with Balem's fingers as she shakes her head in response, rejecting the snide offer of the immortal and preparing herself for the chase, the fallout, the sky set ablaze.

She is met only with a twisted smile.

It is far worse than any physical retribution.

"I thought not."

Fingers drop from her face as Balem floats away on airy footsteps. Somewhere behind her, a door opens, the sounds of shuffling feet fill her empty ears. Jupiter knows better than to look, knows that somehow, this is only the beginning of the test, of the pain.

"Do you know why this system works, Jupiter?"

Balem's words are marred by the scuffle behind her. Still, she does not dare turn, does not risk taking her eyes off her source of imprisonment and her source of salvation, a twisted messiah amidst the stars.

He turns to face her again, his eyes pools of liquid starlight flashing in the dimming light of the room. Behind Jupiter, the struggle has stopped. Silence exists now, silence except the words that continue to drop like poisoned diamonds from Balem's lips.

She sees the immortal's nod a second too late.

Suddenly, her arms are pinned behind her back – an unnecessary precaution, she muses, as she is far too weak to fight or attack. She is spun around to face the doorway and the strange sight before her eyes.

An old woman kneels before her, milky eyes and leathery skin telling the story of a life lived in servitude and pain. The gun pointed at white hairs seems ignored as her eyes focus, unseeing, upon the force before her.

Jupiter cries out as she understands, she struggles against the arms of her captor, but the wails of the injured are unheard in the galaxies of Balem Abrasax.

The immortal is at her side, leaning into her ear, whispering words already spoken but not yet understood.

"It works because some lives will always matter more than others."

The woman whispers something unheard. Prayer, Jupiter knows. Oh, she knows, she knows, she feels the fire and water dripping from parched lips. Save one, save them all, she remembers from something far away, from another time.

"What do you want?"

The words grate against her throat. Balem moves in response to her question, an answer provided without words.

Jupiter feels cold lips against her neck, working their way along her jaw, dancing toward her mouth. She cannot move, cannot fight, cannot breathe as they capture her own lips in a gesture without love, lacking any emotion but the passionate hatred that flows from the immortal's body.

Then they are gone. Jupiter drops her head, her arms still pinned firmly, a captive of some unseen guard. Her eyes close against the harsh truths of the small room whose walls add another painful memory to their records.

A single shot rings out.

Kalique's cryptic warning sings in its wake.

Jupiter is released. She collapses to the floor, head hanging and eyes cast downward, awaiting tears that will never come.

"You are the life that matters more, Jupiter," he speaks, the words rushing over her with unintended calm. "I can give you everything once you acknowledge your worth, once you relinquish your riches to the thing which matters most."

The night overtakes her. Blackness replaces all thought of the murderous immortal as she strays out of space and time.

She wakes in a bed that is not her own. Jupiter knows, somehow, that the bed is his, that the room belongs to him. She does not think, but only drifts back into a harsh and dreamless sleep, six pomegranate seeds dancing across her memory.


	5. Chapter 5

She used to ask her mother about the afterlife, heaven, the beyond-this-world. To Jupiter, the word _eternity_ was terrifying. Her mother would comfort with tales of families reunited, a painless existence free from the bonds of servitude toil, where all the tears would be wiped from her children's eyes, and they would live beneath the gaze of the Holy Father.

Jupiter wishes her mother could see her now.

_A god, I am, _she muses_. But not the joyful, painless thing you envisioned, mother. Your lies seep through cracks of memory and starlight. I see them dancing with the foremost._

Overhead, galaxies burn and rage. Jupiter watches their endless and meaningless toil with eyes like cut stone, flint. Somewhere, a thousand thousand mothers lie to their daughters, teach them the eternal myth of boundless and unending life, a fable to keep things awake - a ghost story crafted for a girl-child.

Underneath, satin and silk caress her perfect skin. Tangled in their embrace, Jupiter makes no attempt to escape the soft bonds of servitude that bestow a godhead. She is too weak, too tired, and too many things are falling apart before her eyes. Jupiter muses upon a death like a lover's touch, a tightened swath of fabric and a long drop into whatever truly lies beyond.

But the fate of the Earth still rests between her fingers.

Her musings sigh and float away, drifting downstream, carried off by the Styx. Jupiter, too, allows herself to be dragged beneath the peaceful waters - for the time.

* * *

When she comes up for air, she finds the god himself staring lazily down at her. Jupiter does not bless him with movement or greeting, but remains, a thing immobile at the center of his universe. There is, she admits, some comfort in knowing her power.

But Balem knows this, too. An immoveable force, an unstoppable object. They are things not meant to exist within the same universe, let alone the same room. Yet here they are. The great power play rages on and their verses create the entirety of the song, rushing over them in waves of glory unattainable.

"You must eat."

Jupiter knows the smile that lightly dances across her lips is a clear indicator of her victory. He has spoken first. The unstoppable object has, for the moment, slowed down to accommodate her force. Good.

"Balem," she whispers, nothing more is attainable, "You know I will not."

Silence, that heaviest of conversations, passes between them. Verbose, the god is not, as he nods stiffly and walks from the room, robes of starlight and black silk billowing behind his looming form. Jupiter should feel relief - he is gone, he is gone, the god has been vanquished and near approaches the light eternal.

But she feels only a clenching anticipation at his sudden absence. Things, averse things, are to come.

Jupiter is right. He returns, an immortal cloaked in victory, a god accustomed to winning. Behind his victorious form, Chicanery Night wheels a small cart. Jupiter is nearly shocked - an impressive thing, for nothing truly can surprise her, now - when the splice holds down her arm and inserts a thin needle into her non-existent vein.

A drip.

She drifts though galaxies, wrapped in the sheets of an immortal, the reoccurrence of a powerful celestial queen - and she is being fed through a conventional hospital drip. It is anticlimactic, so unpoetic, and Jupiter nearly laughs at the absurdity of the situation.

Almost, that is.

The sound hitches in her throat when Balem nods, imperceptibly, at the splice, and Mr. Night takes his leave. She is, again, alone with the powerful ruler of galaxies, an immortal to whom all pay an unknown homage, around whom drifts billows of incense and incessant prayers and supplications. Upon his fingers dance the entirety of life. Not a god, Jupiter finally realizes. The God.

But now the God is removing his heavy robes, letting them drop to the floor with an uncaring flourish. Everything in perfection, she notes. And the God lazes over to the bed, draping himself across the satin sheets stained with blood he cannot see. And the God places long fingers across her forearm, something in another world that would be comforting, but the God knows better, knows intimidation and control and power.

And next to Jupiter, the God sleeps.


End file.
